Larvatus Prodeo

Anyone who’s been following the Clinton Blogger Pics Scandal! might like to check out the latest instalment wherein Ann Althouse does a Coulter.

But read Lindsay from Majikthise first for context, and Jessica Valenti’s response at Feministing. The confected controversy, readers of my previous post may recall, was actually all the result of a crazed comments thread, then post from Althouse where she accused Jessica and the folks at Feministing of constantly talking about breasts and posting pictures of breasts to get hits, and claimed that Jessica couldn’t be a real feminist or something because she was photographed with Clinton at a blog meet and supposedly looked like Monica Lewinsky. Oh, and that Jessica, like many feminists, has breasts. Or something. It was never easy to figure out, because Althouse kept shifting her ground constantly. But the gist of it appeared to be that young feminists should stop being uppity. And not have flickr pages that show they have lives. Or something. Althouse’s latest move is just absurd – it’s very clear that her initial intervention was a nasty slapdown of a very talented blogger and writer, for reasons that are best left obscure. But “victim claiming” is the characteristic ploy of the culture warrior who’s called for their rubbish.

In short, I think this goes beyond just Althouse’s rant. Feministing, as I read it, is not a blog that spends its time attacking other bloggers, or even taking gratuitous potshots at pollies. What it does do is synthesise a lot of information of concern to women, international and American, and place it within a context informed by feminist analysis. It’s feisty, it has style, and its writers are talented. It’s a long long way away from the DailyKos style of arrogant preaching and furious agreement. Some people, it seems, just aren’t able to deal with a feminist message articulated rationally and with verve, and one articulated by young women (perhaps because, you know, we live in a post-feminist age and all?). What’s disturbing about the deeper implications of the Althouse attack and subsequent meltdown is that it seems that for some in the blogosphere, just being a feminist blogger is enough to unhinge screws and generate vicious attacks. That, frankly, sucks.

Elsewhere: More at Shakespeare’s Sister, and there’s a transcript of the relevant bits of the vid here.